Hoping for a dull, lazy spring and summer

May 11, 2010|By Neil Stilwell

It’s a rite of spring, an annual homecoming: The Kentucky Derby, more specifically, the Kentucky Derby party at the home of John and Karen Peters, in Higgins Lake. And it’s typically the weekend my snowbird folks return from Florida.

The homecoming was for a party of one. I fetched dad April 29 at Pellston Regional Airport. This year there was no one to pack the car to the bursting point, no one to keep my dad awake and shout out directions on the 1,448-mile trek from southern Florida to Northern Michigan.

And this year marked the first time I’d go to the neighborhood Kentucky Derby gala with just my dad in tow.

Mom died a year ago. It was just him and me — no one to bake mom’s famous baked beans; no one to wear the fancy, flowery red hat; no one to clumsily trip and fall off the Peters’ deck.

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May 1 this year marked the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby and the 24th party hosted by the Peters. Mom and dad made most of the local neighborhood parties over the years, missing some because they’d not yet made the annual drive from Florida to Higgins Lake.

They missed the party by a just a few days last year. Mom died a day after they returned north. So the last one she made was in 2008. She wore her red hat. I’m pretty sure she fell off the deck. She did both nearly every year, it seems.

This year dad had to fly solo, literally and figuratively, on the trip back and at the party. No amount of cajoling or complaining and exaggeration on his part would budge me to support his desire to drive his new car home from Florida alone. Nor did I want the experience of riding shotgun for 1,500 miles with an 80-year-old man behind the wheel. I say riding shotgun, because no one is going to be allowed to drive his new car but him.

I bullied him into flying, frankly. It was a long day for him, but all the flights went smoothly. He even got to fly on a real jet from Detroit Metropolitan to Pellston International. The jet was a good surprise. He’d been joking that the plane would be a Piper Cub — which I believe seats two and a small cat.

The challenge for dad each year upon returning north is getting the well and pump to run. Each year it’s a crap shoot on whether the pump will work after six months asleep. Yippee! It started! Would the car start? Fired right up! Would his neighborhood conveyance, the golf cart, start as well? Just a quick battery charge did the trick!

Everything went off nearly hitch-less. But a snafu in the mail forwarding left me scrambling on his behalf, getting bills paid, power shutoff notices revoked and insurance restored.

Mom always did all this paperwork stuff. And she was a tiger about it — and not in a cute, cuddly way. She’d rip you apart if you were the cable company and failed to follow her directions. The mail forwarding screw-up would never have happened on her watch, I can assure you.

It’s a cause for pause. But we got it cleared up.

For the Derby party, the two “bachelors” brought store-bought cinnamon rolls. They were tasty for about five minutes then dried out into small rocks. We missed mom’s baked beans.

But that’s OK. Plenty of folks brought plenty of goodies to the annual potluck. No one starves at John and Karen’s Kentucky Derby party.

Lots of folks at the party wanted to know how dad weathered the winter in Florida. I don’t know if they asked him, but they sure asked me.

Overall, he spent his time in Florida about how he always did when mom was alive: he just did everything alone — and driving a big new Lincoln that he’s always wanted.

Is the Lincoln somehow a substitute for his late wife? Probably not, but it sure gave him someplace to focus his attention.

So at the party, I told the story to those who asked about his new Lincoln. I said that he seemed OK, while pointing to things I wish were different.

Dad’s already said I don’t need to be around for the anniversary of mom’s death this week, but I feel I at least ought to be present for him. He’s already said he doesn’t want to talk about it, that it makes him sad. I know that the neighbor ladies — women he’s known for years — are sure to say something. There will be hugs, at minimum.

He wants to put the acute grief behind him. But he still hears her voice and answers her from another room before he stops to think that the voice is silent, in his head and in his heart.

I hope he hears her again — hears her grousing about the mail, even if it’s just in his head. I think it gives him a sense of all’s right with the world.